Tuesday, September 23, 2014

The inevitable juggernaut of life
rolls on relentlessly and we, as props, merely try to evolve with passage of
time. Some do it successfully and others like me are caught in a warp of reminiscence
making an obtuse effort of clinging on to every transitory moment. I’ve been
often engulfed in this abject state of nostalgia, and appreciatively I’ve managed
to emerge as a more positive and assured individual through these reflective
paroxysms. Durga Puja in Kolkata is one such piquant trigger in my life which
arrives annually and pokes my wistful genes through numerous innuendos and
allusions. Birendra Kishore Bhadra’s lilting Mahishasura Mardini (Annihilation of Buffalo Demon)
chants still captivate me every Mahalaya dawn, probably the only daybreak I’m
ever witness to considering the kind of doped sleepyhead that I am.25 years ago, this was a routine imbibed by
my parents typically emphasising that Durga Pujas would not commence
spiritually if one did not hook on to the then radio recitals of this
octogenarian narrator. Initially I quivered in contempt, failing to decipher an
uncomplicated code where every year the entire Bengali kibbutz would wake up to
this very baritone and hail the onset of Devi Pakkha, such that it almost
became synonymous with the carnival itself. Bengalis have always been parochial
about their customs and habits, and this was nothing dissimilar. In 1976, All
India Radio having commissioned the Tollywood legend Uttam Kumar for the same
recital, owing to absolutely lukewarm responses had to replace him immediately
the next year, with Bhadra returning to the foil again. It has crooned on
unchanged ever since, and provided us all with the grand opening act of Durga
Pujas.

Born
in 1978, a hefty part of my adolescence and youth had been exposed to a sort of
transmutation amongst the Kolkata Puja organising fraternity primarily during
end 80’s and 90’s. From traditional canopy-based pandals/mandaps, Puja
committees gradually were seen to be moving to Structural Replicas like
imitations of various Indian Temples, Shrines, Palaces etc. in an effort to
exhibit something different from the ordinary and thereby attract the masses. The
earliest harbingers of such Mandaps were the
then usual

A Geometric Structural Design...
Babubagan Club (2013)

bigwigs namely College Square Sarbojanin, Ekdalia Evergreen Club, Sealdah
Athletic Club, Sreebhumi Sporting & others who, year on year, routinely churned
out some replicated colossal monument. Replicas ranged from Jagannath Temple at
Puri to Kedarnath Temple at Kedar; from the lavish Amba Vilas Palace at Mysore
to the Hazarduari Palace at Murshidabad…. Futile attempts were also made to
recreate Taj Mahal (Agra), Red Fort (New Delhi) & Chhatrapati Shivaji
Terminus (Mumbai) principally to serve the taste of the ever enthusiastic travel
buffs of Bengal. In all the above examples, sadly this duplication remained
restricted to the façade and only the frontage of the pandal resembled the
actual monument whereas the interiors still continued to be largely a disparity
in décor and theme.

One of the initial experiments with Pandal Form... This Tent-shaped Pavilion
was a far cry from traditional Mandap Forms... Made primarily with Canes this
was one of Susanta Pal's unique structures... Naktala Udayan Sangha (2007)

I remember a few instances where such reproductions had actually caught the critics’ eye…. Lotus Temple (New Delhi) Replica by Santosh Mitra Square Sarbojanin in 1995 and Dilwara Jain Temple (Mount Abu) Replica by Jodhpur Park Sarbojanin in 2001 were two samples of structural simulations which have remained in my memory. Attempts were also made to create mock-ups of monuments from lands far and wide, beyond national boundaries. Even though some of those recreations managed to arouse public tumult by virtue of being out-of-the-box but most of them were typically forgettable and extremely lacklustre in terms ﻿of architecture and in art quotient. Be it the Egyptian Pyramids… the Babylonian Ziggurats, or even the more modern marvels like White House of Washington DC, St. Peter’s Basilica of Rome & Pashupati Nath Temple of Kathmandu…. each one of them were reconstructed albeit in a rehashed manner… People thronged these Mandaps due to mere inquisition instead of awe but ultimately these irrelevant pieces of exhibition remained very short-lived in the minds of the audience. Puja spectators were maturing and gradually starting to expect more from the organisers in terms of skill and creative aptitude instead of mundane rip offs.

﻿

Mandap right out of the pages of Arabian Nights... 33 Palli, Beleghata (2008)

There was also a phase where
Sarbojanins resorted to Mandaps resembling incidents or even referential
reconstruction of Hollywood Blockbusters. The Mandaps were created to represent
real life events, ideally those which topical or newsworthy. In some cases, bad
news became apparently good news for the organisers. In 1997, Santosh Mitra
Square Sarbojanin had pulled the rug from under other Barowaris with its extraordinary
display of the infamous Gaisal Train Tragedy, with blood-smeared bogies and
bodies. Clearly, success is spelt as "innovation". A bit of imagination,
a bit of artistic license, and one could end up with a pandal that will attract
the biggest turnout.
﻿

﻿The prototypical Bengali has
always been a movie buff, and hence the influence of the tinsel town has always
writ large on Kolkata Pujas. Durga images were often sculpted like contemporary
Tollywood & Bollywood matinee idols. In
the 1960’s when Suchitra Sen was the undisputed queen of Bengali filmdom, Lakshmi and Saraswati idols were known to have been
modelled on her face.

A Giant Kadam Flower.... Santoshpur Triangular Park Sarbojanin (2012)

In the late 70’s & 80’s, artistes were asked to portray the
“Hema Malini smile” on Durga, the “Amitabh Bachchan hairdo” on Kartik while the
poor Asura remained a grotesque “Gabbar Singh” or “Shaakaal” look alike.
Hollywood’s debut in Kolkata Pujas can be dated back to the time when one of
the Clubs had imported the style of Durga-Demon combat from the west, by essaying
a Tarzan-esque Asura swinging from vines and about to leap on Durga, sword in
hand. Post Jurassic Park franchise in the 90’s, a lot of Clubs put up multitude
forms of dinosaur tableaux to cash in on the global dino-mania. There was a
point where it seemed T-Rexes were almost lumbering into puja pandals at every
nook and corner of Kolkata. Gory sight!!! But nevertheless, there were
countless takers and you could find the same trend continuing at

some Puja
Pandal even today. 1998 saw Saltlake FD Block Sarbojanin erect a 150 ft long,
90 ft high replica of the Titanic, which easily swept the popularity charts for
the year. Apart from the usual hype it induced, this was a major milestone for
pujas in Saltlake, who before this were almost like making up the numbers. A
few years later in 2007, the same Barowari came to limelight with the display
of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Castle. There was enough mass hysteria around it and
this ploy by the organisers paid off with lakhs of people swamping to witness
this spectacle. The gimmick also gathered momentum just before the Pujas with
JK Rowling and Penguin Books suing the Puja Organisers for copyright
infringement. Obviously
the matter was eventually resolved mutually and amicably through Delhi High
Court’s intervention.

The turn of millennium also
corroborated the advent of thematic displays and conceptual art forms. New
methods of structural implementation of Pandals were experimented upon.
Innovative shapes and dimensions were offered by theme-makers to give
appearance to their inventive impressions.﻿

One of the early exponents of Wood Carved
Installations... Chaltabagan Lohapatty (2006)

Durga Puja, even a decade back, was
quite often an experience in conventionality. Rarely did the discourse throw up
issues of art installations, deconstruction, exploration of folk art forms and
theme-based craftsmanship. Durga Puja Mandaps no longer have the staid, dull
look of yesteryears. Instead mandaps have now comfortably metamorphosed from
canopy-based structures to site-specific installations. A brilliant example of
such site-specific installation was undertaken in 2010 by Susanta Pal at
Badamtala ﻿﻿

Site Specific Installation meets Street Art for the first
time in Kolkata... Susanta Pal's brilliant Sun God Wall
Motif was the cynosure of his theme Dugga Utsav....
Badamtala Aasharh Sangha (2010)

Aasharh Sangha. The theme was coined as “Dugga Utsav” wherein the
entire locality was given a makeover. Residents had to flit through open doors
that formed the base of a gigantic representation of the sun; balconies were framed
by decorative motifs; walls were intricately painted (picture on the left) and the neighbourhood
houses blend in tastefully with the pandal that is wedged cosily within a small
clearing. Everything and everyone from the locality seemed to have become part
of the grand puja canvas. Conclusively, the art movement in Kolkata has
steadily incorporated strong doses of post modernism and Durga Puja has become
an exposition of conceptual art.

Amongst the theme-based Pujas,
the visualisers deal with issues ranging from the spiritual and environmental
to historical and mythological. This provides ample scope for
conceptualization, and results in a common aesthetic strain which embodies the
design of the outer pandal area, the mandap, the idol and lighting scheme. But
there have been cases of utter disaster as well where the theme or installation
was so cryptic that it turned out to be an absolute farce. Distinguished German
artist Gregor Schneider, who was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale
in 2001 for his installation work Totes
Haus u r, designed the pandal shell of Ekdalia Evergreen in 2011. The
ambitious project - "It's all Rheydt in Kolkata 2011" was made of
plywood and plaster, with the pandal resembling a "re-constructed" German
road. This abstract form of work which recreated a three-dimensional road using
typical techniques and material failed to muster any sort of appreciation from
the public primarily due to the fact that most of the audience could not
understand Schneider’s presentation. And most importantly, there was hardly any
connect between the Pandal with the spirit of Durga Puja. The public feedback
was so disapproving that Ekdalia Evergreen had to return to its traditional ways
in the following year. Hence, it can be decisively concluded that thematic
displays have not always reaped dividends for Clubs.

﻿﻿

A beautiful Prasanta Pal display based on the folk art of Gond Tribals of Madhya Pradesh, which bagged them Asian Paints Sharod Samman for the year.... Ultadanga Sangrami (2013)

That is not to say, however, that
the making of Pandals can simply be fused with contemporary art, for there are clear
variances between the dynamics of the two endeavours. For starters, the
hybridity and impermanence of a theme pandal and its production by a
professional artist do not﻿﻿

automatically make it synonymous with installation
art, because unlike pandal-making, installation is a mode of representation in
modern art created at a specific art-historical moment in the discourse of the
avant-garde. Also, due to the mass nature of the festival, one's artistic
freedom in designing a pandal is often consciously compromised by numerous
factors, from ritual and iconographic stipulations to public taste. Contrary to
one's studio work, therefore, choices and treatments of themes in this context
have their limits. For instance, even though a female deity is the focal point
of this annual event, it is hard to imagine images of female nudity,
prostitution or pornography appearing in a pandal that addresses exploitation
of women as its theme. Eventually, the role of the market is vastly different
in the two spheres. The art market, which operates all year round, has hardly
anything to do with this season-specific commissioning and appraisal of pandals.

I perceive Durga Pujas of Kolkata
to be the world’s largest, most popular public art exhibition. And probably the
only one that ends with the artworks being so methodically demolished and
eliminated. Only a city of anarchists could produce such outrageous beauties, and
then destroy it with such elation. That
is what this bizarre city called Kolkata has been, and will be!!!